There could be any number of press releases and teasers landing in the inbox in a given week for new watch designs, forthcoming releases, and what’s about to hit Australian shelves.
More often than not, they’re just renders. Some I love, some I appreciate, and some leave me wondering how the hell they manage to do it. Hublot’s latest collaboration with world-renowned artist Jeff Koons left me feeling all three – I simply couldn’t wait to see these pieces in the metal: these bloatedly beautiful balloons somehow contorted into a familiar horological shape within Hublot’s Classic Fusion collection, if only so I could confirm they were, in fact, metal, and not the same foil that would find its way onto the corners of a town hall ceiling after every kid’s birthday party.
After spending some time with them at the Sydney launch party last week, I still can’t say with any confidence how the Swiss luxury watchmaker has pulled it off.
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One of the most well-known and commercially successful contemporary artists alive, Jeff Koons has spent decades turning the banal, the beautiful, and frankly ridiculous into some of the most recognisable objects in modern art.
His Rabbit sold for US$91.1 million in 2019, setting an auction record for a living artist at the time, while his Balloon Dog sculptures have become something of a contemporary-art calling card – one selling for US$58.4 million at auction in 2013.
Now, those famously inflated hounds have been given a wrist-bound interpretation in Hublot’s new Classic Fusion Balloon Dog collection, making this an unusually shiny intersection of contemporary art and luxury horology.
In a crowded room in Sydney last Friday, the collection was officially revealed to Australia’s discerning media and collectors.
For many, it was the first time seeing the pieces in person, seemingly as perpetually perplexed as I was at how Hublot had managed to translate Koons’ contemporary flair into one of its Classic Fusion designs. It didn’t take long, however, for the close relationship between the two contemporaries to become abundantly clear.
Rather than wondering how they had done it, I was left wondering why it had taken them so long. After all, both have challenged convention in their respective fields, whether through material innovation or the development and introduction of proprietary materials throughout the 1990s and 2000s.
After the addresses, and a number of the colour-matched cocktails (a detail I'd love to say I clocked straight away, but took all three glasses to work it out), the media were able to get a proper hands-on with the pieces – and it’s not like them to wait for a second invitation.
The collection arrives in three distinct colourways to match Koons’ contemporary work: red and blue in anodised aluminium, and polished stainless steel.
All three measure 42mm, consistent with the Classic Fusion collection that Hublot has lent for the release, but in each segment, each corner of the collection, the pieces have been puffed, bloated, expanded, blown up – however you want to call it, reminiscent of the enduring inspiration to which they owe their name.
I went for the red first, partly because it was nearest and partly because it had been stealing my attention all week. The anodised aluminium had been polished to a shine and milled on a five-axis CNC, almost as though the faintest of pokes might displace the air inside.
The crown is moulded to resemble the inflation valve on a balloon, while at 10:30 a flexible little rubber tail curls out from the case. You adjust the time by pinching a balloon valve. Throughout the night, I did it more times than the watch required.
Across the dial, domed appliqués with white Super-LumiNova, Koons' own signature at six, and the iconic small dog riding the seconds hand.
The strap is rubber and stitched with a puffed metallic insert in a matching tone, leather on the red and blue versions and polymer on the silver, while the deployant buckle has been inflated to match. Hublot rates it at 50 metres, which seems generous for something dressed as a pool floaty.
But it was the steel one that truly got me: mirror-polished stainless steel rather than aluminium. If I’m being honest, it was a nightmare to photograph under the room's lights, throwing back this warped, funhouse version of everyone around me. Designed and executed just as Koons intended then, I thought.
Flip any of them over to reveal the HUB1710 Self-winding Movement, a 27-jewel automatic with a 50-hour power reserve and a rotor that's been inflated to match the rest. It's only 3.7mm thick inside a case that stands 11mm off the wrist. Koons says he and Hublot share a fascination with material science, and holding one, I could see what he meant. Hublot has turned the case into the sculpture and left the movement to do the horology.
“Hublot is a manufacture of depth, where materials are reinvented, movements refined, and design reengineered with purpose,” Koons said.
The room seemed to agree, of course. Orders were already coming in from Australian collectors – some taking all three for a complete Koons set. At $37,100 a piece, and given where his market has been heading, it might be one of the easier investment decisions anyone makes this year.
Which, perhaps, brings me to my one gripe: there are only two hundred pieces in each colourway. It’s the most fun Hublot has had in years – easily its most daring. And executed perfectly. I just wish there were enough to go around.